Nigeria has become a dumping ground for counterfeit phones from across the world, the Association of Telecoms Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) at the weekend, told the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).
Its President, Olushola Teniola who spoke during a special reception organised by the group for the Executive Vice Chairman/CEO, NCC, Prof Umar Dambatta, lamented that the rather uncontrolled influx of fake/counterfeited mobile phones into the country has added to the pains subscribers go through with end user poor quality of service (QoS).
He lamented that unregistered/unapproved mobile phone brands currently have over 150 models circulating in the country.
The NCC limits itself to type-approving mobile phones, while the role of the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) and the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) remains unclear on the issue. The two agencies are quick to blame the menace on the number on people who import mobile phones in negligible quantities in their briefcases each time they are coming into the country.
He said: “ATCON is interested in the continuous development of the telecoms sector but there are some issues that have constituted a threat to investment, friendly and enabling environment for our members and if these threats are not put under control, our industry might suffer decrease in investment. These monsters are dumping of counterfeit phones; implementation of National Broadband Plan; approval of draft National ICT Policy; foreign exchange squeeze viz-a-viz network roll-out; proposed nine per cent Communication Service Tax bill; and local content within ICT sector.”
Teniola advised the NCC to step up actions to protect subscribers, protect indigenous original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and guarantee a high level of QoS.
He said: “Government should put anti-counterfeiting measures such as the facilitation of integrated web portal-based international Mobile Equipment Identity (IME) and International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) collection to stem the menace of sub-standard or unrecognised mobile phones circulating in Nigeria with the obvious consequences of poor QoS, loss of revenue to the government, loss of business by OEMs and loss of jobs as well in Nigeria mobile market. For instance we have more than 20 mobile phone brands that do not have NCC type approval certificate to operate in Nigeria. In addition, we have our 10 per cent of fake mobile phones products of some of the popular mobile phone brands in Nigeria.
“ATCON is aware that your appointment is based on your pedigree as a thorough bred professional with sterling leadership quality, we are confident that you are equal to the task ahead. Therefore, we would like the EVC to tell us what the Commission is doing to either ameliorate or eliminate all these anti-development agents in our sector.”
Responding, the NCC chief said the issue of QoS remained a major concern to the Commission. Dambatta said worried by the barrage of complaints that daily inundated the Commission, one of the first things he did on assumption of duty a year ago was to inaugurate a committee on QoS. He said the committee has been working round the clock, adding that the Commission has also acquired the requisite tools to monitor QoS remotely from the Commission’s office.
He lamented that while the technical side of the challenge could be addressed through the issuance of direction, the non-technical aspects such as delayed issuance of right of way (RoW), epileptic power supply, vandalism, unprovoked shutting down of base transmission stations (BTS) and others remain intractable.